other moods intervene in which I have the feeling of something in me, in the Leaves, that is vital—that may live: something not exactly mine but spoken through me that must outlast me: something not owed to my ego but having a race quality, fitting in with the struggle of democracy in our time to free itself from the clutter of the past." "Hurrah!" cried Harned. And the hurrah went round the table. Then Walt said quietly: "If I say amen when you are all so good to me you will not misunderstand, will you?" That fervent offhand utterance gave us the clue we wished. That is Whitman's why and wherefore. That something or other which baffled yet persuaded Tennyson. That something or other which may for ever baffle but will finally persuade the popular will wherever Whitman is read. "I do not anticipate ever being received in lieu of any technical philosophy: I am something different: I don't provide theories for people: I ask them about their own theories-I spur them on so they do their own speculation." That's the way he put it to me. Again I have heard him say: "The main thing is having people understand people-brothers brothers. I suppose that's where I shine if at all: in bringing people together-in bringing people together: in insisting upon it that the differences shall not be accentuated. We are more alike than not alike: we are more noble than not noble: that I want to say and say again for ever and always." I asked him: "Do you provide for progress? Is your feeling about all this likely to weaken the fibre of those who accept you? He thought not. "But if it does then I stand condemned. Maybe the best answer to all that would be your own assertion-I have heard you make it often-that bourbons have very little interest in Leaves of Grass: that you find practically all intense Leaves of Grassers ardent advocates of the new humanities."

"

"Here is

Every time we brought out a new edition of the Leaves or brought out one of his subsidiary volumes, Walt would call it "the conquest of a new world." When we finished November Boughs he said: "Now what shall we do? Like Alexander I sigh for other worlds to conquer." It is still frequently said as it was in Walt's own hearing: the poet of democracy and the democracy repudiates him." But Walt was not worried by that charge. "I refer to a democracy that is yet unborn,” he said. "Which means that when your democracy comes it will know you?" He assented to this right off. 'Exactly," he said. "And it's partly

"

your job to produce it?" " Exactly," he said again. Just as many people misconstrued him when he said "I," just so many people, some of them the same people, misunderstood him when he said "America." They supposed the "I, Walt Whitman, a cosmos," was Walt exclusively, and not just as surely John Smith, the same cosmos. And they supposed that his America was something geographical and not as surely his England or his anything provided the democratic spirit horizoned its idealism. I showed him a photograph of a group of Englishmen. "How American they look!” he exclaimed. If you want to misrepresent Whitman you will regard this as parochial. But if you want to know him according to his own size and shape you will see that it is intercontinental. Any Americanism that Whitman ever had in mind was all inclusive. When you are gone so far, when you are so big, when you are so beautiful, you are American. That is, you are a democrat among democrats. So he would talk of the Americanisation of the world. Not, of course, intending to imply that we, occupying the geographical America, were to evangelise the earth. His America came from within not from without. It is imperative that Europeans should get Whitman in this perspective. Otherwise he has moments which they might ascribe to simple bombast. Carlyle spoke of Whitman as one who thought he was a big man because he lived in a big country. But Carlyle missed the real slant. If he had been more patient he might have seen that Whitman thought America was a big country because it lived in him. For to Whitman the people inevitably are first. That's what Leaves of Grass all comes to. The declaration that the people are first. Not a portion of the people. Not the saving remnant. But the everyday people. The vast overflowing populations. They are first. Matthew Arnold, who couldn't see Whitman, couldn't see this. When he was asked by an American in Philadelphia what he thought of Whitman this same Matthew Arnold raised his eyebrows and answered his questioner with a question: "Ah! what does Longfellow think of Whitman?"

In one of our chats I said to Whitman: "I not only expect to live to see you sell at fifty dollars a volume. I expect to live to see you sell at ten cents a volume." Which pleased him. "That is, you expect me to be in demand superficially among collectors and profoundly in the crowd? Good!" I have seen both things happen. And now I am seeing another

thing happen. And even assisting it to happen. My small boy wonder is having my man's confirmations. That which

I looked ahead towards as a boy I look back upon as a man. Huxley said he helped rock the cradle of evolution. I can't say literally that I helped rock the cradle of Leaves of Grass. I came along a little too late for that. But I was on the ground before the youngster was through crawling. I have had something to do with everything that has since occurred to Leaves of Grass. Towards the close Whitman wrote his noble self-survey: "A backward glance o'er travell'd roads." I have lived long enough and been intimately enough associated with the Whitman pilgrimage to bring that backward glance up to date. Way buried in the fifties, when he was misrepresented by almost everybody who didn't ignore him, Whitman wrote a review of his own book in which he said: "His is to prove either the most lamentable of failures, or the most glorious of triumphs, in the known history of literature." It looks to me as if it was the most glorious of triumphs.

HORACE TRAUBEL.

CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY, U.S.A.,

January 8, 1912.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS.-Leaves of Grass, 1855; other editions, 1856, 1860-1861, 1867, 1872, 1881, 1889, 1892, 1897; Drum-Taps, and Sequel to Drum-Taps, 1865; Poems, selected and ed. by W. M. Rossetti, 1868; new edition, 1886; selected and ed. by E. Rhys, 1886; Democratic Vistas, 1871; Passage to India, 1871; As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free, 1872; Two Rivulets, 1873; Memoranda of the War, 1875; Complete Works, 2 vols., 1876; other editions, 1882, 1888-1889, 1892; Specimen Days and Collect, 1883; November Boughs, 1888; Good-Bye My Fancy, 1891; Complete Prose Works, 1898; Notes and Fragments, ed. by R. M. Bucke, 1899; Complete Writings, ed. by R. M. Bucke, 10 vols., 1902.

LIFE AND LETTERS.-Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and Person, by John Burroughs, 1866, 1871; The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication, by W. D. O'Connor, 1866; by R. M. Bucke, 1883; Autobiographia, 1892; by J. Addington Symonds, 1893; In re Walt Whitman, ed. by H. L. Traubel, R. M. Bucke, and T. B. Harned, 1893; Reminiscences, by W. S. Kennedy, 1896; Calamus; Letters written during the Years 1868-1880, ed. by R. M. Bucke, 1897; The Wound Dresser: Letters written from the Hospitals in Washington, ed. by R. M. Bucke, 1898; Walt Whitman's Diary in Canada, ed. by W. S. Kennedy, 1904; With Walt Whitman in Camden, by H. L. Traubel, 1906; Life, by H. B. Binns, 1906; Life and Work, by Bliss Perry, 1906.

N.B.-The present Copyright Edition is published by special consent of Walt Whitman's surviving executors, T. B. Harned and Horace Traubel; and it follows the text recommended by him in 1871-1873. A second volume will complete the work.